Alannah's Educational Portfolio

AI Tools for Literacy

by · February 7, 2024

This week I decid­ed to look into some AI tools that teach­ers can use to sup­port lit­er­a­cy edu­ca­tion in their class­rooms. MagicSchool.ai stood out to me right away.

It is a gen­er­a­tive AI plat­form cre­at­ed by edu­ca­tors for edu­ca­tors. It has many use­ful tools that teach­ers can use to take some of the many repet­i­tive tasks off their plate. 

MagicSchool.ai has a long list of AI tools (Mag­ic Tools) edu­ca­tors can use to sup­port their teach­ing. Sim­i­lar to the pop­u­lar AI plat­form, Chat­G­PT, it has a Cus­tom Chat­bot to inter­act with based on a cri­te­ria that you choose. You can use this fea­ture to ask ques­tions rel­e­vant to teach­ing such as, “What is the best way to get the atten­tion of your students?”

It also has an AI gen­er­a­tor for les­son plans, report card com­ments, real world con­nec­tions, sen­tence starters, teacher obser­va­tions, and many, many more. It can be used as a tool for brain­storm­ing, plan­ning, and reflect­ing. Used appro­pri­ate­ly, MagicSchool.ai can be an extreme­ly use­ful resource for edu­ca­tors of all grades and subjects.

One of the fea­tures I was excit­ed to explore was MagicSchool.ai’s Mul­ti­ple Expla­na­tions tool. This tool is meant to “gen­er­ate clear expla­na­tions of con­cepts that you’re teach­ing in class to help stu­dent under­stand­ing.” My expe­ri­ences in teach­ing have taught me how impor­tant it is to pro­vide dif­fer­ent ways for stu­dents to inter­act with con­cepts, and make sure you pro­vide mul­ti­ple ways for stu­dents to under­stand a new concept.

This tool gives teach­ers dif­fer­ent ideas for explain­ing con­cepts, cater­ing to the dif­fer­ent learn­ing styles and needs of stu­dents. I thought about how this could sup­port lit­er­a­cy edu­ca­tion in dif­fer­ent grade lev­els, and decid­ed to try it out on a grade 7 Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts con­cept: fig­u­ra­tive lan­guage. The Mul­ti­ple Expla­na­tions tool gen­er­at­ed an expla­na­tion for dif­fer­ent types of fig­u­ra­tive lan­guage, as well as a num­ber of examples.

I want­ed to nar­row my search down to get more spe­cif­ic answers. In the BC Cur­ricu­lum, stu­dents are expect­ed to learn how to rec­og­nize and use dif­fer­ent lit­er­ary devices, such as imagery, metaphors, and sim­i­lies. The next prompt I gave the gen­er­a­tor was “How can I teach sim­i­lies effec­tive­ly in the class­room?” It start­ed list­ing out dif­fer­ent ways to intro­duce sim­i­lies to a grade 7 class. 

The Mul­ti­ple Expla­na­tions tool on MagicSchool.ai makes sure that edu­ca­tors have clear instruc­tions and effec­tive strate­gies to intro­duce con­cepts to their class­es. When focus­ing on a spe­cif­ic need, such as teach­ing sim­i­les to a Grade 7 class, it pro­vides dif­fer­ent ways for teach­ers to meet the diverse learn­ing needs of their students.

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